Early Ancestor Day

Learn about our early ancestors by touching and examining real hominin tools, some dating back 900,000 years, and by watching how these tools were created during a stone tool making demonstration.

Dr. Shawn Carlson, MacArthur Fellow and Founder of LabRats Science Education Program, will lead children and adults through the primordial mist to a time when Neanderthals hunted mammoths and the first Homo Sapiens migrated out of Africa.

Participants will see one of the most extensive collections of authentic Neanderthal and Cro Magnon tools in North America. Anywhere else you would have to look at these through glass, but Dr. Shawn will let you pick up and hold the tools that our ancient ancestors created with their own hands! These original early ancestor artifacts have not been shown anywhere else in San Diego.

After families get the opportunity to investigate Dr. Shawn’s early ancestor stone tools, they will get to watch a stone tool making demonstration by Victor Herrera, an experienced flintknapper and archaeologist. He will show everyone how these early stone tools were created by making them himself. This is the closest you can get to a direct experience between us and our prehistoric ancestors.

Questions are strongly encouraged. This is a unique opportunity to teach children about our human evolution in an extraordinary way.

Info: cratner@sandiegoarchaeology.org or 760-291-0370.

The Mission of The San Diego Archaeological Center is to preserve archaeological collections and promote their educational, scientific, and cultural use to benefit a diverse public.